IF THESE WALLS SPEAK. Esthetics Center by Serrano + Baquero Arquitectos

Description of project by Serrano + Baquero Arquitectos

In the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors¹ the main industry is the production of mirrors with various curvatures. The only mirror with a flat surface that reflects a true image of reality is the exclusive property of the king, so that the less graceful inhabitants look beautiful and the beautiful ones look ugly, the young people look old and the older people look young, while the hungry and gaunt inhabitants appear bright and well nourished.

In the winter of 2015 we received the commission of the reform of a commercial premises to adapt it to a new use as an aesthetic center. Our intention was to conceive a place that, fulfilling the functions required by the client, would imply an experience for the user other than the one commonly associated with this business. Through the path inside the hairdressing space and thanks to a continuous mirrored surface, with convex, concave and flat areas, the project aims to generate different sensations in the visitor, depending on their position and the reflected image that can be obtained of themselves and their environment in each moment.

The user will see a distorted and enlarged reality during the journey from the entrance, through the mirror to the other side, where the hair is washed, and in the work area where the mirror remains flat he will be able to observe different distortions of what is happening around.

During the months of January and March of 2016, the project materialized, responding to the scarcity of means with an architecture that treats the existing premises preserving all partitions, walls and previous installations, painting them with white paint, and arranging a floor, carpeted in part, as a catwalk that limit the 'waiting and gossip area', the children's play area and the space reserved for work. The main effort is centered on the construction of the piece introduced in the room, which is made by mirror on the outside and black velvet on the inside. It is unrelated to the geometry of the room and contains the toilets, storage and reception area, as well as the lighting system, delimiting the space and at the same time expanding the perception of it.

In the Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors only the king had access to the multiple interpretations of the same reality, through the flat mirror and the curved mirrors. In this project the walls speak for themselves so all the visions of what happens in the space are shown to the visitor, and it is up to him to decide which version of himself he prefer to stay with.

¹ Korolevstvo krivykh zerkal (Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors). Communist cut film that recalls to a certain extent the adaptations taken to the cinema of stories like 'Alice in Wonderland', 'Through the Looking Glass' and 'The Wizard of Oz', made in the Soviet Union in the year 1963 by director Aleksandr Rou.